Kevin M. Kruse: Without even clicking the link, I’ll guess the reason — all the talk of racism makes white kids feel guilty. Again, if your kids are reading histories of slavery or segregation and identifying with the racists in the story, that suggests you’ve got your own problems to work through. Leave us out.

The many manifestations of racism — slavery, segregation, etc — were an integral part of not just African American history, but American history. Denying that reality and pretending racism wasn’t a serious problem is, in itself, racist.

Harford County (a right wing exurban county home to John Wilkes Booth) school board votes 5-4 to not allow AP African American Studies classes because they focus too much on racism

African American studies is too ‘divisive’ for one Maryland school districtwww.thebaltimorebanner.com The move left students and staff scrambling to find replacement classes, but some educators and diversity advocates say the broader message does more lasting damage.

Without even clicking the link, I’ll guess the reason — all the talk of racism makes white kids feel guilty. Again, if your kids are reading histories of slavery or segregation and identifying with the racists in the story, that suggests you’ve got your own problems to work through. Leave us out.

makes the white kid's *parents* feel guilty. Guarantee the kids aren't sitting there going "oh my god i'm history's villain?!"

Nobody is feeling guilty. They just want to ensure no one lesrns to object to things like child labor or forced birth. History teaches lessons of how to be a better person & that's not good for people who want to be worse.

* learns to object 🙄

And that's how we know it's not really about things that make white kids uncomfortable. What kid has ever sat in history or social studies class hearing about terrible people and thought "I identify with them because they're white and I feel attacked!" No one. They just think "that's terrible."

This is about them learning about what really happened and maybe making *Mom and Dad* uncomfortable. (Even then, I'm probably overthinking it, and "uncomfortable" is more likely just marketing cover for "teaching kids anything we don't like is indoctrination.")

Yeah both my kids read about Rosa Parks and MLK and they never once identified with the bad guys in those stories. Kids tend to empathize with the victims

And that's what scares the shit out of their parents

Yeeeup. They don't want these things to be taught not because it makes their kids feel bad, but because it actually teaches their kids to not be (so) racist.

Or worse, their parents say something racist and the kids call them on it.

Some of my relatives were quite explicit about telling me that the (honestly, very mild) calling out they'd taught me to do was better than the racism they were expressing. They weren't where they should have been & knew it, but they deliberately taught their kids to do better.

Important point in this thread.

@jbouie.bsky.social had this right a while back: if black children are old enough to experience racism, white children are old enough to learn about it

simple as that

It's insensitive to students of German descent to teach about Hitler!

It’s actually worse, they came close to saying they thought it would teach black kids (75% of the enrollees, class was offered at their request) would learn “victimhood”

“There’s so many assignments and pictures of police content, human rights conflict, social justice conflict, people against the police,” she said, “instead of the focus on great people in history, which I was hoping to see.”

Yeah, they wanted it to be "great achievements by African-Americans" rather than accounts of struggle and protest - history as American glory only

A purely herrenvolk ideal

This may be my lapsed Catholicism speaking, but I don’t think guilt is necessarily a bad thing. I have a clear memory of learning about slavery as a 5 year old and feeling guilty/embarrassed about it, but that feeling developed into empathy/support for social justice, reparations, etc as an adult

That’s the problem! They see empathy as weakness, and support for social justice and reparations as anathema

Yeah, I can understand kids, especially young kids, having a wide range of reactions to learning about something as horrible as slavery/racism, including guilt or shame, but the automatic jump to defensiveness on the part of the *parents* in these cases is abhorrent

But the guilt/shame is pretty rare. They don’t internalize as “I” or “my people” did that horrible thing, rather somebody did that horrible thing. You’ve got to be carefully taught, as the song goes.

Guilt/shame may be the wrong word on my part. But I think it's reasonable for kids to feel upset after learning something upsetting. I guess I didn't feel like *I* was a bad person, but even at 5 I understood that people looked like me did bad things and felt bad about that

I'm perfectly willing to grant this may not be a common response, lol

Absolutely on brand that this public-money-sucking dude is the school board president - dailycaller.com/2023/06/08/o...

AARON POYNTON: Here’s Why This Veteran Is Supporting Ron DeSantis For Presidentdailycaller.com I firmly believe that under DeSantis’ leadership as commander-in-chief, our nation’s security will be prioritized.

Whenever you see someone getting glazed over their service record like this, what isn't said is more important than what is said. The ensuring justice angle is highly suspect seeing as he did a tour at Guantanamo where plenty of illegal things happened.

"In support of" is a fancy way of saying "non-combat role." Which, why invoke the SEALs if you didn't fight with them? Oh that's right, to inflate opinions of the record while maintaining plausible deniability. This is further born out by him getting a Bronze Star, which, as an officer in OIF...

they basically issue in Cracker Jack boxes. Not to say no one earned theirs, but the award inflation was fucking real in OIF. Notice there was no mention of a Combat Action Ribbon. Sooo yeah. Fucking FOBBIT. I am not saying that non-combat role deployments were easy for everyone, they weren't...

but the way this is presented is sycophantic, intentionally misrepresentative, disgusting, and filled with dishonorable weasel words. Fuck Rodent-in-Ass and this toady who took a break from trying to eat the rodent long enough to write this.

Indeed. By that standards as a contractor I "deployed to Northern Virginia in support of" [insert whatever unit I want, since my position was Army-wide. Let's say Delta Force] operations OIF/OEF". I mean. I helped units get export control waivers for equipment and wore a suit and tie, but sure.

don't undersell that working as a guantanamo bay torturer was his actual dream job as a high school kid

Yeah, I mean, when I think of all those freshly minted NCOs that never had to take Meat Gazer duty 'cause Ron always volunteered himself, I can't help but be happy for them.

Not that this is even the issue, but it’s maddening to hear that trigger warnings and safe spaces are antithetical to the education experience because education should be about challenging your comfort zone, and then see this extraordinary show of privileging white fragility. It’s boggling.

They fear their children will learn empathy at school, something they don’t teach (or practice) at home.

A Tokyo friend, a Black American teacher at an expat elementary school, got upset about some misused equipment and said they should appreciate the privilege of having a school with nice things, etc etc. Guess which word got him in trouble with the American parents. PC is returning, with a twist

A hit dog will holler.

Bingo

It seemed to me that it was never about anyone feeling guilty. It's about kids learning that racism is still at work in our systems today and demanding they be changed. Nobody making money in the current system wants change

I don’t think it’s identifying with the slave owners to feel some guilt that white people currently benefit disproportionately from a system that is in a lot of ways a continuation of Jim Crow policies.

But it might start them thinking about ideas, and reasoning, and stretching those brain muscles. Can’t have that.

I don't think they're censoring information about systemic racism because it makes white children feel guilty. Rather, I believe they want them to grow up blind, deaf, and dumb on the issue in order to maintain systemic racism. But maybe I'm just stating the obvious here. Feel free to say 'duh.'

Worse, it makes them lefties. I still remember privileged kids reacting to historic discussions of slavery/ indigenous massacres with excuse-making outrage or tearful apologies, making it about them without advancing understanding of the issue. That's what conservatives fear: uncontrolled narrative

It's not the kids, necessarily. It's the parents who were perfectly fine with slavery and raised the kids who are learning the slavery and racism they (the parents) were fine with was bad who are freaking out. As much as kids dislike school, they also do tend to want to learn. And learn the truth.

MLK is the only study topic of last year that my rising 2nd grader spontaneously talks about. From his POV, it makes a lot of sense that things used to be bad, that they're now a bit better but there's still work to do, and that he is lucky to be in a position to help with that.

All of the US history courses I took in high school and college (my college was surrounded by the Gettysburg Battlefield), I never once felt guilty. I thought owning other humans was despicable and those that did were assholes, no matter how enlightened they said they were. But, they aren’t me.

Please.

My dad was born in TX, went to a couple years of school there before his family moved to other states. He had to relearn the history of the War Of Yankee Aggression, which apparently had something to do with slavery and wasn't just an attack on the Texan economy.

Why wouldn't white people identify with the bigots in history? I'm from Georgia so these are my literal ancestors. A key thing is telling this history when the kids are young. I noticed white guilt is greater on the West Coast, I think because they're adults when they learn the bad part of history.

"Your ancestors enslaved people, fought a war to keep slaves, etc." of course people feel bad at hearing such a thing. Teaching this young gives people time to come to terms with it.

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